Business Watch: Are you prepared to go over the cliff?

Saturday

Dec 29, 2012 at 3:43 PM

You probably already know that, barring a last-minute compromise by Tuesday, Americans are heading over the fiscal cliff.

Some financial experts say Congress and President Barack Obama could still avert a recession if they come to an agreement in the next few weeks to soften the impact of higher taxes and spending cuts. Consumers apparently didn’t place much faith in their ability to get it done, though, because holiday spending rose by only 0.7 percent compared to last year — the weakest showing since 2008, according to the Associated Press.

So what, if anything, are you planning to do to minimize the fiscal cliff’s impact on your family or business? Or do you think the rhetoric is overblown and unlikely to have much of an effect? Submit your ideas to my email address or Twitter handle below and I will share the best ones next week (unless, of course, our elected representatives come together with a compromise in the next few days).

That said, it appears new businesses are still opening in the Topeka area. Here are a few highlights:

MEXICAN RESTAURANT IN THE WORKS

When someone says the word “taco,” I’m willing to bet the first phrases that come to your mind aren’t “fresh” and “made from scratch,” unless you happened to grow up in a Mexican-American family that loved to cook.

Leticia Llores said her family hopes to change that when they open their new restaurant, Taquito Express, at the corner of S.W. 29th and Fairlawn. She said she was tired of highly processed tacos with high-sodium condiments, and her family wanted to offer something different.

They will make their own corn tortillas, Llores said, and even the orange juice will be squeezed when the customer orders it.

“Everything we’re going to make is fresh,” she said.

The restaurant is scheduled to open Jan. 5, Llores said. It will be open seven days a week, with breakfast burritos served from 6:30 to 10 a.m., and with various styles of tacos and tamales served until 7 p.m. They also plan to serve special dishes on the weekends, including menudo, a spicy Mexican beef soup that some online sources claim cures hangovers — though I can’t verify that claim.

REAL ESTATE OFFICE OPENS

Mossy Oaks Properties of the Heartland opened an affiliate office, called Sunflower State Properties, at 1717 S.W. Topeka Blvd.

Office owner Aaron Terhune said the office specializes in selling land for investment, recreation and farming. Most of the properties don’t have a structure on them and are bought by people who want to grow crops, secure mineral rights or have a place to ride horses or hunt, he said, though a few have homes on them.

“A lot of people kind of want to live outside the city,” he said.

The office mostly sells properties in northeast Kansas, Terhune said, though he is handling some in other areas of the state. Though commercial and residential real estate have dropped in price throughout the economic downturn, land has maintained its value and even increased, he said.

“That’s one thing that’s been on a steady incline,” he said.

Terhune said he and his staff have a good understanding of what rural land buyers want because they grew up in small Kansas communities.

“We know how to talk to them,” he said.

OLATHE COMPANY HONORED

Skyline Displays Heartland received the Product Development and Management Association’s Outstanding Corporate Innovator award, which recognizes companies that develop creative new products. Skyline, which is based in Olathe, was the first company in the exhibits industry to win the award.

Company President Todd Williams said Skyline was recognized because they developed “modular” furniture and graphics for tradeshow vendors. Most exhibits companies produce wooden displays, but they use steel and aluminum hardware with fabric banner graphics.

“This leads to substantially less cost of ownership for our clients over the life of the exhibit,” he said in an email.

That reduces the weight of the displays and allows standardized parts to be combined in different ways, depending on what the vendor wants to use them for. If you had a set of blocks as a child, this is something like that, with set shapes that vendors can use to show off their product in whatever way they want.

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